Three Great Game Design Evils

[avatar]

What game embraces having bad 3D angles.

[Diff-chan]

Your mom.

[Cowutopia]

Resident Evil 1-3

[avatar]

We need a new fad.

RE 1-3 have it's fans so whatever. Just like Xenosaga if you don't like how they are designing the games then don't buy them.

[MechDeus]

I'm was referring to using it along with other methods, and not just sticking to one single style for the whole game.

I agree this would be a good thing in all games (as I said in my earier statement about how games should be progressing), but by the same token name a JRPG that varies its methods to any real extent. Nothing from Japan is going to advance that, all they've really done in regards to character interaction and story-telling since Dragon Warrior came out was refine the cutscenes. Lunar uses the same methods as Xenosaga which uses the same methods as Star Ocean 2 and so on. The only real difference are some games have CG/anime cutscenes and some don't.

A method of actual gameplay involvement in the characters and development of the story goes a long way towards making things more interesting in games. The only difference you've mentioned between what you like and what you hate is having to pay attention for more then five seconds. The odd thing is that you keep saying you wish they switched up how they told the story, but if all of that stuff was skipped you would still end up not knowing what was going on.

See, I don't agree with this at all. You can't compare an early Sega CD RPG to Xenosaga and say that the story was "throwaway."

Why can't I compare? Are you saying it doesn't hold up?

How did you reach that conclusion? Because 3/4 of the disc wasn't taken up by cut scenes?

Because it had as much story and character depth as a handful of Voltron episodes.

No one remembers just the cut scenes.

Same goes for FFVII. It was still popular because it had cutscenes.

The story in Lunar was deep enough for the time but never seemed to get in the way of the gameplay, which is what I'm trying to say.

Yes, I said I understood that you wanted to level grind.

I'd have to ask you if you've played it then, because it's a great example of what I'm saying. Those who wanted the full story about the Chozo, the space pirates, and where Samus came from could scan and read everything. Those who didn't care didn't have to. No skipping, no pauses. Sure, the game gives you story so that you at least see how things progress, but it never gets in the way.

And what I said is that's easy with a story that can be summed up in two sentences with no character development, but fails if you actually need to get across a large amount of info. Metroid Prime's story was, "Chase and kill bad guy. The end." Samus being raised by bird people doesn't ever come up in the course of the game so it's not like there's some moment where the people that skipped those parts would go, "Why did she say that? Is she related to the Chozo somehow?"

If done effectively information can be hidden that can only be found on select paths by doing certain things (i.e. Shadow is Relm's father) but depending on the intricacy of the story allowing the player to skip certain things - at least the first time through - can lead into enough confusion that the player is too lost to even care to finish. Xenosaga II was almost entirely background information. That's about 40-some hours that was just describing why a couple of characters are doing what they're doing and why they act the way they do. It advanced the other characters and the larger story as well but I don't think you understand just how much is going on in those games.

Now, it can be done where there are multiple paths, each of which has its own chunk of the story and only by playing through over and over will you understand why this person decided to go here at this time and how this item ended up over here and so on. On the other hand, games with a story as expansive as Xenosaga's are very far and few between and none with anywhere near the production values. Developing a game which combined all of those could take an entire generation of game platforms.

Now, if we got to the point where we had a series of mini-engines to license - like Havoc, for instance - to handle all the really tough hurdles it's possible such games could probably be developed in a reasonable timeframe. To have a free-roaming world where you can interact with characters and build up your own persona while having influence on an epic story, I would love that.

I'm probably nowhere near my original point and have just started rambling. TLDR and shit.

[Melf]

What game embraces having bad 3D angles.

Oh, I don't know, maybe just about a thousand 3D platformer and action games made since 1995?


Don't like = don't buy. Gotcha. I guess you don't plan to ever discuss anything on this board again, do you?

If done effectively information can be hidden that can only be found on select paths by doing certain things (i.e. Shadow is Relm's father) but depending on the intricacy of the story allowing the player to skip certain things - at least the first time through - can lead into enough confusion that the player is too lost to even care to finish. Xenosaga II was almost entirely background information. That's about 40-some hours that was just describing why a couple of characters are doing what they're doing and why they act the way they do. It advanced the other characters and the larger story as well but I don't think you understand just how much is going on in those games.

So, you'd rather go in the opposite direction than, from zero character development to a game that needs several installments just to do so? Think about what you said here:

That's about 40-some hours that was just describing why a couple of characters are doing what they're doing and why they act the way they do.

God, that's insane. How much about the character do you need to know? It's not a question of attention span; it's a question of overkill. What I meant by having the choice was that I would at least be able to decide how much of the story I was going to have. It's not right to just button mash through all the cut scenes without knowing what's going on, as some do add greatly to the game (Half Life, Resident Evil), but it's not acceptable to have to sit through 40 hours of "character development" either.

Your comparison to Lunar makes no sense because you're comparing a 16-bit RPG on a then-fledgling medium to a modern generation offering. The quality of the story in Lunar was deeper than most RPGs of the time, but yes, it was pretty hollow compared to what we see now. The same can be said for just about every RPG of the 8 and 16-bit era.

Not wanting to be put to sleep with cut scene after cut scene has nothing to do with "level grinding," and I don't see why you view those who don't like tons of them as not wanting them at all. It doesn't have to be one or the other, which is my whole point. There needs to be a balance. It's like saying that if I don't want to read War and Peace, it's because all I like to read are tourist brochures. It makes no sense.

Eh, it's not that big an issue really, and Xenosaga taught me to avoid those types of games like the plague, so whatever....

[Fe 26]

Lunar for the sega cd was awesome. I got it when it first came out and thought it was the stuff.

[Yoshi]

Lunar for the sega cd was awesome. I got it when it first came out and thought it was the stuff.

IAWTP

[avatar]

Oh, I don't know, maybe just about a thousand 3D platformer and action games made since 1995?

Oh please. Most games in 1995 have bad 3D angles becuase camera angles are hard to work with. It wasn't a design choice. It was a lack of knowledge. The camera angles today(like CG) are much better.

You said you didn't like Xenosaga. I said of course you wouldn't becuase it relies on cutscenes(which you don't like)and is a bad example for this discussion.

Don't like = don't buy. Gotcha. I guess you don't plan to ever discuss anything on this board again, do you?

I'm pretty sure that goes for most people. Do you buy stuff you don't like?

[MechDeus]

So, you'd rather go in the opposite direction than, from zero character development to a game that needs several installments just to do so?

Yes. More specifically, I want control over a character but I want the others I'm interacting with to be completely fleshed out. If a story takes a few hundred hours then that's what I'll put in so long as it keeps me interested. I would much rather play/watch through a fully developed story that takes a long time as opposed to playing/watching multiple, quicker partially-developed stories.

God, that's insane. How much about the character do you need to know.

Actually it was really interesting and explained a lot regarding all sorts of things that happened, an entire generation of experiments, the reasons a war broke out, and the interactions between huge groups of characters. It gave a lot of purpose to events and actions that most games would brush off at best.

Your comparison to Lunar makes no sense because you're comparing a 16-bit RPG on a then-fledgling medium to a modern generation offering.

Then fledgling? Hardly, Dragon Warrior was huge and the FF series had already saved Square and built up to the wildly popular IV in years past. But regardless, I see no issues in comparing stories from different periods. If it's good it'll always be good.

The quality of the story in Lunar was deeper than most RPGs of the time, but yes, it was pretty hollow compared to what we see now. The same can be said for just about every RPG of the 8 and 16-bit era.

Chrono Trigger did a lot of interesting things and FFVI still has a good story (even if the writing is terrible).

Not wanting to be put to sleep with cut scene after cut scene has nothing to do with "level grinding,"

That's really the only other thing there is in most JRPGs.

It doesn't have to be one or the other, which is my whole point. There needs to be a balance.

Neither, really. No cutscenes and no grinding. I want RPGs to live up their genre title.